WingTsun's first step for trainees in learning how to use an attacker's force against them is to "get rid of your own force." This statement has multiple meanings. Many people keep a lot of tension inside themselves. They are taught from a young age to "be strong." This is interpreted to mean that we have to be able to lift a lot of weight or to have strong lifting or pulling muscles. It is also interpreted to mean that we should not express emotions and therefore hold things inside. the reaction is often to hold one's breath. getting full breath becomes counter intuitive. With the shallow breathing that results, one's health is negatively affected. The first exercises in WingTsun are not calisthenics. They are martial arts movements and at the same time, train the student to "get rid of their own force." The single straight-line thrusting punch is to be executed in a way that released all the energy of the punch and condition the appropriate muscles to do so. By exerting any pulling with the bicep, the trainee will not be able to release all of the force. To help counter this, each punch is followed by a half wrist circle with the elbow fully locked. This is designed to stretch the arm muscles and especially the bicep which is often shortened by repeated flexing with bicep curls, heavy labor, rock climbing, chin-ups, gymnastics and other activities. - The next movement is the slow palm-up hand and bridge-on hand movements of the first form called "the little idea." This is accompanied by a relaxed breathing style for the beginner. A beginner would progress to a more focused breathing style which trains the bodies breathing muscles, lungs and mental acuity. The body also gains in the area of exchange of gases, i.e., more oxygen intake by intelligent breathing an exhaling carbon dioxide. The focused sequence in considered the warm-up for more vigorous training and can be considered WingTsun's meditation. One can extend the slow movements to an hour or more. Indeed, many practitioners are said to spend long periods with the little idea form. - The phase that comes with finishing the little idea form and starting the next form is the "arm seeking form." This coincides with Chi Sau training. In chisau, the trainee further learns how to "give up the force" to enable "dexterous rebound." This is a more advanced phase of mental training in which you have a stressful situation of simulated video game-like combat and at the correct moment you have to do something counter-intuitive - give up the resistance and let your attacker try to move against you. The thing that many arts do not have is correct footwork thinking and technique. While sticking to our attacker like flypaper, we keep our breath calm and quickly MOVE OUR FEET, left, right or lastly, to the rear so as to let his force dissolve. In a fight with a stronger attacker, we might have many situations where we have to step and step again to regroup and patiently wait for him to make a mistake that we can capitalize on. Any practice with a weaker training partner should be done the in same way so as to train the logical, yielding force physical concepts into our arms and mind. By training the mind to give up the force rather than clash with stronger forces, we can also signal our subconscious to stop going against those forces in our daily lives and use a smarter way to move ahead. Less, stress, smarter lives.